Not too windy today

[EternalOptimist]

Another site with UK energy stats here: n e t a | Electricity Summary Page

Wind = 0.7% over the last 24 hours. Don't know what the current installed wind capacity is.

At least with renewables the price is heading inexorably down, while the price of oil, gas and coal, all of which we have to import and pay a handsome profit on to someone, is heading in the opposite direction. As well as leaping around in price and the risk of not getting it at any price if countries get all uppity, which seems quite possible in future.

not true actually. wholsale prices of gas are coming down and set to fall even lower as Canadian oil and frakking come on stream worldwide.
The strategic argument is a valid one.
Everyone wants clean cheap and plentiful energy. I also want a green and pleasant land, unobscured by those hideous monstrosities

[d000hg]

not true actually. wholsale prices of gas are coming down and set to fall even lower as Canadian oil and frakking come on stream worldwide.
The strategic argument is a valid one.
Everyone wants clean cheap and plentiful energy. I also want a green and pleasant land, unobscured by those hideous monstrosities

Do you think we will run out (or significantly reduce availability) of oil & gas in our or our kids' lifetimes? Or do you reckon the reserves are so large as to be effectively inexhaustible at our rate of use?

[gingerjedi]

At least the council houses have had plenty of hot water over the past week.

[EternalOptimist]

Do you think we will run out (or significantly reduce availability) of oil & gas in our or our kids' lifetimes? Or do you reckon the reserves are so large as to be effectively inexhaustible at our rate of use?

When I was a kid , we to run out of oil by the time I was 40.

I dont believe the doom-sayers any more, particularly the greens.

I do know two things, The Canadians have discovered and are exploiting their tar sands, which have more reserves that Saudis ever had or will have. The Canadians also have claims on oil reserves in the Arctic, which have more reserves that Saudis ever had or will have.
In addition we have shale gas and nuclear

I think the next generation will be ok, based on what we have now

particularly if they move to Canada

[Diver]

Wind has also not produced 6.5 cubic kilometres of radioactive waste ion the UK that nobody knows what to do with. and is costing Billions to manage every year and has so far cost more than all the windfarms in the world combined.

Chris Huhne speech to the Royal Society:

More: Chris Huhne speech to the Royal Society: Why the future of nuclear power will be different - Department of Energy and Climate Change

Thank you. I’m delighted to be here today.
It’s a great honour to address the world’s foremost scientific institution.

Without these distinguished Fellows of the Royal Society, the secrets of nuclear energy would have remained hidden for longer.
So today’s subject is fitting. And I want to thank everyone involved with producing the Society’s report on fuel cycle stewardship.
One of the clearest lessons from the history of nuclear energy is that government, industry and science work best when they work together.
A scientific adviser must speak truth to democratic power without fear. In my view, it makes sense if democratic power then listens.
It is in that spirit that I want to take an open and honest look at the history of nuclear power in Britain.
If we are to retain public support for nuclear as a key part of our future energy mix, as I believe we should, then we have to show that we have learned the lessons from our past mistakes.
And some of those mistakes were not small. Nuclear policy is a runner to be the most expensive failure of post-war British policy-making, and I am aware that this is a crowded and highly-contested field.
We currently have around 6,900 cubic metres of high-level nuclear waste. That’s about enough to fill three Olympic swimming pools. We have enough intermediate-level waste to fill a supertanker, and a lot more low-level waste.
We manage the world’s largest plutonium stocks – more than a hundred tonnes – and they will need guarding for as long as it takes us to convert it and build long-term deep storage. And if we don’t, we will have to guard it for tens of thousands of years.
Half of my department’s budget goes in cleaning up this mess, and it will rise to two thirds next year. That is £2 billion a year, year in and year out, that we are continuing to pay for electricity that was consumed in the fifties, sixties and seventies on a false prospectus.
Yet the total nuclear liabilities that the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority now deal with are estimated to be £49 billion, and I cannot be confident that the figure will not rise again as we discover yet more problems.
Just look at the history of rose-tinted spectacles: the provisions for nuclear decommissioning costs in total were £2 million in 1970. £472 million in 1980. £9.5 billion in 1990. £22.5 billion in 2000. And now £53.7 billion.
It seems to me essential reassurance to tax-payers and energy consumers that I and my successors can honestly say “This will never happen again”.
Despite this history, I believe that nuclear electricity can and should play a part in our energy future provided that new nuclear is built without public subsidy. And it is precisely because of that post-dated bill from past nuclear mistakes that I reiterate with exceptional feeling “without public subsidy”.
The reason is the same as so many other environmentally-minded people now give. Nuclear energy has risks, but we face the greater risk of accelerating climate change if we do not embark on another And costs matter when a quarter of our power plants will close by the end of the decade.
By 2023, all but one of our current fleet of reactors are scheduled to close, taking with them nearly 18 per cent of our electricity supply. We have to find 20 gigawatts of generating capacity and £110 billion of investment in the electricity market. That replacement cycle is double the normal level of energy investment.
Gas is an option, even for the long term, with carbon capture and storage. But fossil fuel price volatility has increased, and world gas prices have risen by a 29 per cent in a year. It is surely not in our national interest to rely even more heavily than necessary on fossil fuels from volatile parts of the world.
Renewables are a family of technologies which will last forever, with less environmental impact. They should be a growing part of our supply, as they are in other countries. But thanks to decades of under-investment by previous governments, the technologies are still relatively young. Uncertainties on some really promising technologies like wave and tidal stream are still considerable, and costs remain high.
Nuclear too has uncertainties, as the cancellation of new programmes in Japan and Italy and the phase out of existing reactors in Germany all show.
Our examination of the lessons of Fukushima from Dr Mike Weightman is reassuring about our regulatory regime and about safety, but the economics of new nuclear are still untested. The industry still has to prove that it can build these enormous investments on time and to budget.
For all these reasons, our approach is to bring forward a broad portfolio of low carbon technologies: renewables, carbon capture and nuclear. It is the only sensible way to handle risk, as we all know when we run our own pension funds.
However attractive one share may look today, it is rash to put all your money into just one stock. Governments should not bet the farm.
________________________________________
The past
So with my eyes open, and with a nervous look at the past, I say that we need nuclear to be a part of our energy mix in the future.
But it is essential to learn from that past. As George J. Stigler said, history is a good teacher but there are inattentive pupils.
So today, I want to look at Britain’s nuclear past to draw out those lessons.
In many ways, Britain is the birthplace of nuclear energy. Like many first-time parents, we tried everything and we did so with enthusiasm.
The world’s first commercial nuclear power station, Calder Hall in Cumbria, closed in 2003. It was opened by Her Majesty the Queen nearly half a century earlier.
Life was very different in 1956, when Calder Hall was switched on.
Rationing had only just ended. There were no motorways. Sputnik was but a sketch on a drawing board. Lasers and cash machines were still years away.
The industry was in its formative years. Our attitudes to risk were different. The environment was not yet a subject of public concern.
When Calder Hall opened, a Health Minister rejected calls for a government campaign against smoking. Seat belts were optional extras on a few imported cars.
And our attitudes to spending were different, too. Britain was still effectively on a wartime footing: and when it came to strategic national decisions, the relationship between government, parliament and the people was still conducted on wartime terms. Secrecy. We know best. Don’t tell those who don’t need to know.
Following the great smog in London, and the Suez crisis, an independent nuclear programme was held to be important for the nation’s security and prosperity.
This was the setting in which Britain’s nuclear policy was designed. It was a different time. And decisions taken in the 1950s directly affected the liabilities that we are paying for today.
Of course, we have been granted the gift of hindsight, and the benefit of reflection.
As we give the green light to the next generation of nuclear power stations, we must use those precious insights. So let me turn to the lessons we have learned.
First lesson, simple and clear objectives matter. In the early days, we could not decide between guns and butter.
Nuclear technology was given the task of delivering two national priorities – energy for the masses, and plutonium for the military – without proper economic or democratic scrutiny. The reactor used at Calder Hall was chosen firstly for plutonium production; electricity generation was a side effect.
Born out of military requirements but serving civilian needs, the new industry was torn in two directions. Confused objectives led to confused design decisions – and a high legacy cost.
In the United States, by contrast, there was a competition for the most efficient and safe reactor design to produce electricity. A simple objective with a cost-effective result. The pressurised water reactor.
The second lesson is avoid conflicts of interest.
For the first two decades of nuclear energy, the UK Atomic Energy Authority was responsible for both promoting and researching nuclear energy.
The Government’s official adviser on nuclear policy was an organisation solely devoted to nuclear energy. Gardeners like gardening, researchers want more research, and the UKAEA wanted more nuclear energy using their own designs.
That meant advice to Ministers was not always impartial. Designs were chosen and delivered without proper oversight. There was no sceptical, commercial eye for either operating or decommissioning costs.
The third lesson is keep it simple. Such is the extraordinary inventiveness of the British scientific community – to which I pay fulsome tribute here – that all eleven Magnox power stations were built to different specifications. Even their fuel elements were different sizes.
From an energy policy point of view, we needed several good workaday Marks and Spencer suits. Instead, every reactor was bespoke from Savile Row.
The second fleet of advanced gas-cooled reactors were built to a design that almost no-one else used. They did not deliver on budget or on time.
The fourth lesson is that we forgot about our children. About their future. we didn’t plan for decommissioning or managing radioactive waste.
When nuclear power was held up to the cold hard light of the market, it proved to be uneconomic.
Hidden subsidies and uncertainty over liabilities do not make for an attractive investment ........

[TimberWolf]

not true actually. wholsale prices of gas are coming down and set to fall even lower as Canadian oil and frakking come on stream worldwide.
The strategic argument is a valid one.
Everyone wants clean cheap and plentiful energy. I also want a green and pleasant land, unobscured by those hideous monstrosities

Got a source, preferably a chart spanning a decade or two?

The price the consumer pays for oil, gas and coal has certainly shot up inexorably

[suityou01]

Wind produces hardly anything. Same in Germany contributes something like 1%.

Most of the electricity generated by renewables is by "Biomass", approx 10%, which is a useful contribution.

As one professor pointed out, wind is too diffuse. You'd have to cover huge areas with with wind turbines.

This is ground-breaking news is it?

[EternalOptimist]

Got a source, preferably a chart spanning a decade or two?

The price the consumer pays for oil, gas and coal has certainly shot up inexorably

It has, of course. And some say it will continue that way
others think that oil supply will increase in the next few years, and that the gas price is closely linked to the price of oil.

I suppose it becomes a matter of opinion

[Diver]

Current installed capacity is capable of feeding in 38% in winter & 20% in summer max at peak. This may be due to Feed-in to grid restrictions in some areas rather than lack of availibility (off-line).

At the beginning of March 2012, the installed capacity of wind power in the United Kingdom was 6,580 megawatts (MW), with 333 operational wind farms and 3,506 wind turbines in the UK. The UK is ranked as the world’s eighth largest producer of wind power.

723 MW of new wind power capacity was brought online during 2011, a 40% decrease on 2010. 2012 is expected to be a significant year for the offshore wind industry with potentially 5 farms becoming operational with over 1,300 MW of generating capability.

Through the Renewables Obligation, British electricity suppliers are now required by law to provide a proportion of their sales from renewable sources such as wind power or pay a penalty fee. The supplier then receives a Renewables Obligation Certificate (ROC) for each MW·h of electricity they have purchased. Within the UK, wind power is the second largest source of renewable energy after biomass.
The ROC will fund further research & development, removing the public purse (subsidies) from the equation
Wind power is expected to continue growing in the UK for the foreseeable future, RenewableUK estimated in 2010 that more than 2,000 MW of capacity would be deployed per year for the next five years. By 2020, the UK is expected to have more than 28,000 MW of wind capacity.[6]

[gingerjedi]

The Canadians have discovered and are exploiting their tar sands, which have more reserves that Saudis ever had or will have.

What about the Beaver Lake Cree?